I very recently had my very first major laundry fail.
Someone dropped a greasy steak (yep…a whole steak) on Lou’s tan, feather-weight corduroy pants, and I didn’t have my favorite cleaning supply — Tide Original — on hand to attack the stain.
The whole incident was kind of a reality check for me that maybe I’m not really a superhero at all, but rather, I’m just someone who knows how to pick a good cleaning supply. Either way, I’ve fought some pretty terrible stains in my day, and I know without a doubt, some products are worth their weight in gold.
But on that bloody morning, after Lou took a long hot shower, I made up another customized diaper for him. Then, I did my best to sort out the mess in the bathroom before we both got fully dressed, and joined Dave and Judy upstairs for some coffee.
We gave them a less-dramatic version of the day and night we had, but we didn’t want to freak them out too much about how terrible things were getting. And, I didn’t want to expose Judy to the horrors in her beautiful basement until I at least made an attempt to clean it from top to bottom. These were brand new friends in our lives, and it was really upsetting to be experiencing all of this on top of imposing.
I’m sure I blamed the coffee for my shaking hands that morning, but the fact is, I’m certain I was starting to have a mini-breakdown. So I did what I do when I’m stressed: I got myself to the cleaning supply aisle at Target, and I started sniffing solutions. I needed to get that basement clean.
And, having a true sense of purpose seemed to help me cope.
I also found the adult diaper aisle. I carefully studied all of the options to make sure I bought the right size and the exact kind I needed to make the catheter work. The first time I ever bought adult diapers was only two days prior, and I didn’t mention that I accidentally bought a “special sample pack” of Women’s XS diapers, versus the regularly-priced sampler of Men’s X-L — talk about a HUGE difference! All I can say about that insane error is that up to that point, I’d never bought diapers of any kind before, and, I was obsessed with saving money. Diapers are expensive, so I guess a good value distracted me from the most important details!
Anyway.
When I got back to the basement with my sack-of-suds and some new “dude diapers” for Lou, the mess almost seemed worse than I realized. In the bright light of day, I was overwhelmed with the whole of it.
In my attempt to help Lou that morning, I grabbed the first thing I could find, and it turned out to be a cream-colored towel. (Darn.) The bathmat was also ruined (double darn), along with four small white face cloths (holy hell!). And don’t forget the sheets. And, the bedspread. Yep. They were a mess, too. Even my own pajamas were smeared with blood…
So I got down to business.
I slathered all of the towels, sheets, and bedding with a pre-soaking of Tide Original. Then I doused every wall in the room with a heavy coating of this expensive lemon-scented bleach spray I bought. I literally sanitized every surface in the basement — even if Lou didn’t touch it. And I remember inhaling the cleaning fumes on purpose because I thought maybe I could sanitize my mind of all of this awfulness in the process. In the end, it only gave me a terrible headache.
But for me, that was a small price to pay for a clean and sterilized space.
An hour or two later, when I took the sheets out of the dryer, the stains miraculously vanished. (Tide Original rocks!) But as I held the warm bundle of linens in my arms, I was hit by a wave of anxiety about the fact that Lou might have another incident the next time we went to bed. The thought of having another morning like this one suddenly made me feel like my limbs were made of wood.
It was the first time that morning that I really got a grip on the fact that Lou’s bleeding wasn’t just messy; it was terrifying.
While I was twisting through the basement like a white tornado, Lou placed a few calls to the hospital to follow up on his tests, and to let the attending physician know that he was throwing huge blood clots around the catheter tubing. I don’t remember all of the details anymore, but the one thing that stands out for me is that the phone calls were pointless.
Lou just got the run-around.
He was told to check back into the ER if things got worse, but the only other option was to wait for the urology department to call him when they had the test results.
